Your favorite "all around" alloy?

[ShooterAZ]

Besides WW? I have been using 92%pb/ 2%t /6%ant, mainly for handgun loads, and have had fair success with it. What I'm wondering is what some of the others are using as their favorite all around alloy. Wheel weights seem next to impossible to find around here. Thanks...

[462]

I don't have a "favorite all around alloy" -- it depends on boolit application. For hand guns, I use three different alloys: straight wheel weights, 2:1 wheel weights:lead, and 50/50 wheel weights/lead. For rifles, straight wheel weights. I've added tin, but fillout wasn't measureably any better, so quit.

[mdi]

Most of my lead on hand is wheel weights and "range" lead. I've mixed the range lead with linotype metal to harden it up and improve casting, but I guess 90% of my lead is a mix that runs about 12-15 BHN (I have very little "pure" alloy of any type). When I size the bullets to the gun, I have very little leading problems with any alloy I use...

[454PB]

Linotype plus varying ratios of pure lead.

50/50 is used for rifle loads and full out .454 Casull. 25/75 is real close to wheel weight alloy.

[Larry Gibson]

I've found that adding 2% tin to WWs puts the percentages at about 92% lead, 2 1/2 - 3% tin and 4-5 % antimony. AC'd bullets will usually have a BHN in the 14 - 17 range with 16 -17 being the most common. That alloy covers about 95 % of my needs for cast bullets from many cartridges from 900 fps to 2600+ fps. I also have a bit of range lead that I work with linotype, lead and tin to get the BHN in the 16 -18 range. The remainder of my needs is covered by pure lead, WWs +2% tin + 50% lead, and 16 - 1 lead - tin alloys.

With the demise of WWs I, like most everyone else, will be blending our own from other sources....probably more expensive sources at that:(

Larry Gibson

[cbrick]

I would think the answers to this question will run right along with the posters supply, what he has on hand and what he has the easiest access to. Mine certainly does.

For me that is clip-on WW +2% Sn. I blended 800 pounds of several different lots of clip-on weights into one single large lot for uniformity. I also have 800 pounds of stick-on weights belnded together that I experimented with Roto Metals Super Hard & Sn and found it easy to duplicate the clip-on weights, when/if it becomes needed I'll use that. The same can be done with any supply of soft lead, Super Hard and Sn.

The clip-on weights is 95%+ of all my casting and 1,600 pounds will last me a very long time.

Rick

[Char-Gar]

WW is the obvious a answer to your question, but if you can't locate it, then it isn't much of an answer.

You alloy is fine for full snort magnum handgun loads but harder than needed for anything less. You will probably also be happier with a softer metal. I don't want to do the math, but you could alloy it with pure lead and be happy. You would need something around 9 to 10 Bhn.

I only use two alloys;

1. WW + 1.5% Sn for plain based handgun and sub 2,000 rifle loads.
2. Lyman #2 for magnum handgun and above 2,000 rifle loads.

[SlowSmokeN]

My favorite kind of alloy is the kind I get for free

[cf_coder]

^^^ This... :-)

Haven't cast a single boolit yet, but free is always good. Still trying to get a decent amount of wheel weights...

[geargnasher]

My favorite kind of alloy is the kind I get for free

Mine too, hands down.

My second favorite is a certified foundry alloy containing 4%Sb, 2%Sn, and .25%As. Cut it 50% with pure lead and it's a heat-treatable hunting boolit, or air-cool the cut version for great pistol plinking boolits. Heat treat it straight for the most accurate, WFN revolver boolits, and HV target rifle boolits.

Third favorite is WW, both clip and stick, both are extremely useful with a pinch of tin added, and usually a good treat with sulfur and sawdust during "smelting".

Fourth favorite is Lyman #2.

Gear

[williamwaco]

My 'favorite' is clip on wheel weights because it has been the cheapest and easiest to find during my entire reloading/casting career.

It is also my 'favorite' because unless you are looking for expansion in handgun loads, nothing else I have ever used will out shoot it.

If, however I want to show off some beautiful, shiny, sharp cornered bullets, I will go with straight linotype. I would never use it for casual shooting. Only for showing off.


.

[Humbo]

1/4 lino, 3/4 ww. This mix covers most of my needs.

[zomby woof]

50/50 WW/RS plus a little tin and WQ

[ShooterAZ]

So...wheel weights are like hens teeth around here. How bout this one...one part linotype to 2 or 3 parts pure lead? It looks like I need to make another Rotometals order.

[white eagle]

Your favorite "all around" alloy?

Lead

[runfiverun]

1 part lino and 3 parts lead is an excellent alloy for handguns.
giving it the sulphur treatment gets it super close to ww alloy,and makes beautiful boolits.
it will also waterdrop to about 20 bhn and make excellent rifle boolits.

i done like rick.
last winter i sorted all my ww ingots into 4 separate piles,then went to melting and blending.
mixing all the old and new, and blending the front with the back.
so i have one large batch of consistent alloy.

[jmsj]

Like many other posters have stated, it depends on what is being cast.
Mostly I use WW's but the second alloy I use the most is 50% range scrap and 50% Pb. This alloy is used for plinking/practice boolits for our family and friends.
jmsj

[ku4hx]

Besides WW? I have been using 92%pb/ 2%t /6%ant, mainly for handgun loads, and have had fair success with it. What I'm wondering is what some of the others are using as their favorite all around alloy. Wheel weights seem next to impossible to find around here. Thanks...

Lyman original #2: 90% Lead, 5% Tin, 5% Antimony. It's what I cut my casting teeth on and it worked very well for me ... still does for that matter. At the time I was using it, it was cheap to make. Once prices started going up I cut back on Tin until I essentially had what is commonly known as "hard ball". It's worked well for me for the last several years.

But even though hard ball works well for me for most of my current cast boolit needs, I still do some casting in essentially pure lead so I guess my favorite is situational. I blend what I need for a specific application based on my copious notes and my other written casting ramblings.

[btroj]

I have no idea what much of mine is. Itis mostly range lead with a bit of Linotype added.
Sometimes I will add a bit of monotype rut to the pot for a harder bullet, usually just use what I have as is.

Tell you the truth, I have no idea what the exact composition is. Air cooled I can scratch it with a finger nail, water dropper I can't. Works well enough for me.

[Wolfer]

In the past there have been times when I had more WW than PB and at other times it has been the opposite. My alloys in the past have ran from 50/50, 2 PB/1 WW, 3 PB/ 1WW. I don't have a large supply so I shoot most into a tub of sand and a couple times a year seine them out and start over.

Since most boolits I shoot have been shot numerous times already there getting mixed pretty good. BHN usually runs around 9/10 a few days after casting and climb a little with age. Most of these have been run thru handguns at around 1000 fps or rifles at 1600/1700 fps and get good expansion in the rifles but the handguns have to be HP. I have no leading issues with this alloy and see no reason to change it. Although sometimes I throw a few straight WW or water drop my alloy just to play around. I've haven't payed for any of my lead with the exception of the solder and I am dreading having to start. At my current rate of recycling I should have enough to last me another 10 years or so. I suspect I've never had more than two or three hundred pounds total and have shot thousands of rounds. This is why I don't count the cost of my boolits although I do have the cost to melt it.

[MikeS]

I use Lyman #2 for most of my casting. Sure, it might be considered an expensive alloy, but expensive is a relative term. Using Lyman #2 alloy I can cast boolits cheaper than I can buy them, so to me it's cheap. It also makes some pretty boolits!

[williamwaco]

So...wheel weights are like hens teeth around here. How bout this one...one part linotype to 2 or 3 parts pure lead? It looks like I need to make another Rotometals order.


I have used both of those. Both make excellent bullets. I am a soft bullet fan so I would use 1/3 mix.


.

[stubshaft]

My favorite alloy is hardball 50/50 lino/pure but nowadays I tend to cast softer and use 2/10 instead.

[DrCaveman]

I have no idea what much of mine is. Itis mostly range lead with a bit of Linotype added.
Sometimes I will add a bit of monotype rut to the pot for a harder bullet, usually just use what I have as is.

Tell you the truth, I have no idea what the exact composition is. Air cooled I can scratch it with a finger nail, water dropper I can't. Works well enough for me.
This, I like to hear. Crafting carefully measured brews of alloy seems a little against the original grain of boolit casting. More power to those who do it, and I am sure their results are quite repeatable and reliable.

The more reading I do (my favorite seems to be the oldest stuff), the more I feel that laboratory-induced alloys are totally unnecessary. I can understand that doing so (or using said material) is going to reduce one variable within your load development. But the added expense seems to largely contradict the reasons to begin casting:

1) save money shooting
2) get much better at shooting
3) recycle your shot lead, save even more money and shoot more.

At the end of the shooting session, I am never totally sure of the composition of my lead bucket. But everything bad seems to flux off, and what is left seems to be good. Tested 15.4 BHN but the next batch will probably differ... I dont care.

[btroj]

If had a good supply of WW or something like that I would probably be more inclined to use a "standardized" alloy. But I have to use what I have so I make do.
I don't think everyone else has quite as "standard" an alloy as they think at times. If you are buying metal froma known source like Rotometals then you do. If you use Linotype bought as scrap, do you really know what it contains? We know what it did originally but how much tin or antimony was lost over its lifetime as dross?

I use what I have on hand and I make it work.

[Cherokee]

WW & 2% tin for most casual shooting but 3/3/94 for autopistol use. I have lino, tin, WW's, 2/6/92 & 5/5/90 on hand for blending or bullets as needed.

[1Shirt]

I use range scrap as is for handgun. Most of it runs from 8-10 BH. For Rifle loads up to 1600 fps or so, Water dropped wheel weights if I have them. If not pure lead about 75%, Lino 25%, water dropped for about 17-18 BH. For 22's & 6MM's, like it very hard so, pure lino particularly with HP's. Have gotten away from extra hard high BH over the past few years.
1Shirt!

[SlippShodd]

I've made several rookie mistakes lately, which I thought would be harder to do after doing this off and on for 3 decades, dinking around with trying to find an optimum alloy. I have a decent supply of metals that I got from a guy when he gave up casting, supposedly mostly WW, some Lino mix... mostly, I'm finding now, mystery meat. I also have my own known piles of WW, Lino, Pure Pb. I'd been using a mix that was working very well in all my handguns, but I apparently couldn't take yes for an answer and got it into my head that I needed a harder alloy. I dropped an ingot of what I thought was out of the WW pile into a small batch and got this mucky, dirty glop that when cleaned and squared away produced more voids than fills. So, I ran some numbers, dropped in some pure, some range scrap and some pewter tin... then cast, sized, loaded and shot some test loads all in the same morning. The resulting bullets (RCBS 45-201, hollowpointed) were so hard they couldn't be stopped in 3 inches of phone books from 10 yards, were so undersized and hard my 1911 wouldn't cycle to the ejector, left lead streaks in the barrel after 7 rounds, and when recovered were nearly unmarred.
<sigh>
Came home, took a deep breath, emptied the pot, labeled those ingots for use in hardening soft alloy during smelting not casting, took the Pro-Melt apart and cleaned the gak out of the pot, got all the crud out of its poor, syphillitic nose, dropped in some known WW, 50-50 bar solder for a 10-1, and a little range scrap. Dropped myself some beautiful bullets, waited a day while they breathed, ran them through the sizer with my first batch of Felix lube, waited a day, loaded some test rounds and went to bed. Next day, out to the desert, flawless functioning, clean barrel, perfectly accurate, nicely flattened bullet when shot into a 5 lb. barbell weight :).
Still too hard for a HP alloy, but I can get there from here.
Reminders to self from this lesson:
There's a reason you don't cast rock-hard bullets.
Hurrying will not produce the desired results.
You really need to re-alloy that metal pile.
Don't stress -- this is fun, dammit.
Don't mess with success.

mike

[bobthenailer]

I would have to say WW

[Shooter6br]

For me 20-1 (pistol and 45-70)

[wallenba]

Lyman #2. I keep around some Lino to bump up the BHN when I need to.
I don't fuss with scrounging WW anymore, it's almost impossible around here anymore. It costs a bit more, but a lot less than the alternative.

[Shiloh]

50/50 WW/range scrap.
my go to alloy. If I need harder or a bit larger, I add some lino.

Shiloh

[MtGun44]

wwts with a touch of tin.

Bill

[mpmarty]

I've got a whole bunch of clipon ww and about 500 pounds of monotype. I generally use straight ww for pistol and throw in about 10% monotype for rifle

[pancho]

%85 clip on WW, %15 stick 0n WW.my only alloy.12 BHN.

[L1A1Rocker]

Almost all my casting is hollow points (thank you Miha). I run 50/50 pure lead to clip on wheel weight with 2% tin added.



I wonder if someone could turn this thread into a poll?

[.22-10-45]

Most of my cast bullet shooting is with BPCR type calibers..though not necessarily with black powder. and for handguns , Colt SAA in .32WCF thru .45long colt. So over the years my go-to alloy for target use is 20-1 lead-tin for the rifles. The handguns get fed range scrap + WW & tin..still a pretty soft alloy. I have found that with target velocity, there is no leading.

[1bluehorse]

Almost all my bullet casting anymore is for lower and mid range (pressure and velocity) pistol bullets. Mostly 45 colt, so whatever I can get for around a buck a pound delivered to my address suits me just fine....anymore thats mostly "mined" lead at around 8 to 10 bhn. Perfect....if I have to pay Rotometals prices (and others) at 2.50 a lb I think I'll just buy factory bullets :shock: ...as an aside, wouldn't you think that the outfits that used to make all the ww's would market the ww alloy for casters??? I mean they gotta be doin something with that stuff right.....